It’s late afternoon on Friday, October 14, and people are gathering around a small coffee table in a second-floor flat in central Bruckhausen, Germany. By the evening, the pile of shoes in front of the entrance stretches to the wooden staircase, as more and more unannounced visitors arrive, all asking the same question: “Where is Refat?”

Earlier that day, twenty-six-year-old Refat Süleyman, a Bulgarian worker from that country’s Turkish minority, disappeared on the grounds of Thyssenkrupp steel plant in Duisburg-Bruckhausen, one of several production sites in the region run by Germany’s largest steel producer. It had been Refat’s third week working as а temporary industrial cleaner for the Oberhausen subcontractor Eleman Limited, and only his third day in the steel plant.

Working a 5 a.m. shift with eight other workers, that morning Refat was reassigned to Buchen Limited, one of the other cleaning subcontractors on site, where he was teamed up with a foreman and a driver for a cleaning assignment around Gate 4. These two men were the last to see him alive before he was sent on a break in the company vehicle around 9:20. Refat never returned.